It started with a recording of my dad.

The recording

One day my dad was giving me life advice, the way he always has, and I pulled out my phone and asked if I could record him. Somewhere in the middle of that recording, tears welled up in my eyes — because I knew, in my heart, exactly what that video was. It was the thing I would rewatch over and over once he's gone.

I never got that with my grandfather. I wish I could read his Life Vitae — the stories of how he lived, what he believed, what he learned the hard way. But no one ever wrote them down, and now they are simply gone. That absence is permanent. This whole company is, in a sense, an answer to it.

The road here

I grew up in Bedford Village, in a small two-bedroom apartment with my grandmother and my single father. I started my career in investment banking, helping founders tell the story of their life's work when it came time to part with it. Later I trained as a death doula and sat close to the end-of-life process — work I found heartbreaking and fascinating in equal measure. It took me a while to see that those were the same job: helping people say what their life amounted to, while they still can.

There was no single lightning-bolt moment when this became my life's work. It is the culmination of my spiritual beliefs, my lived experience with Bipolar I, and a stubborn desire to gather the wisdom of the world before it slips away.

And it has already given me something I didn't expect: my birth mother is using this platform to share her life story with me, across a Korean-to-English language barrier. The words need translating. The emotions never do.

What I believe

Most people think their life isn't interesting enough to record. But there is a child, a grandchild, or a friend who would love to hear your story — and one day they will give almost anything to hear it again.